


The Haint in the Holler

by luna65



Category: Greta Van Fleet (Band)
Genre: Based on a True Story, Gen, Ghosts, Non-Linear Narrative, Unreliable Narrator, in spots, spooky but not terrifying, the old haunted cabin in the woods trope
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-29
Updated: 2020-05-22
Packaged: 2021-01-06 03:06:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 8,684
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21219539
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/luna65/pseuds/luna65
Summary: “The cabin was also very, very haunted.” - Sam Kiszka“If there’s a haunted fucking cabin, this would be the one.” - Josh Kiszka**************Based on the now-infamous anecdotes of the writing sessions forAotPAin a (purportedly haunted) cabin in the mountains near Chattanooga.





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Ostensibly I'm writing this for the Halloween challenge at Rockfic but also because it's gone around recently (and how weird is that because those articles are from over a year ago) and I wanted to try my hand at another ghost story. I am _trying_ not to make this into a multichapter extravaganza but it is going to be a bit on the long side, I think. I hope someone ends up enjoying it (besides me, I mean)!
> 
> Reader beware: this will be a non-linear, unreliable narrator kind of thing because ghosts.
> 
> Also, I've used deliberate pagebreaks which I don't tend to do but I feel like I need to because it's non-linear.
> 
> **********************************************************
> 
> Every story is made of stories,  
Gemma Files
> 
> “Too often, people make the mistake of trying to use their art to capture a ghost, but only end up spreading their haunting to countless other people.”  
Caitlin R. Kiernan, _The Drowning Girl: A Memoir_

Josh thought he saw her there, standing on the side of the road. The little girl Danny said he heard laughing. A kind of impossible laughter, given their circumstances. When he told them what he had heard, his soulful eyes so wide with a mix of wonder and dread - the sort of thing which was actually meant as _awesome_ \- Josh had felt a chill to flash back on her slight form, in a faded dress and muddy feet. Pale skin and sun-lightened hair moving slightly in the breeze.

These two things shouldn’t be connected. But he pictured them so because it seemed as though she shouldn’t have been there. In between one blink and the next she was made visible if only for mere seconds.

But he didn’t say anything, not then.


	2. The Vibe

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It’s _definitely_ 100 percent haunted.

“Wait...is that a _cemetery_?”

***********

The three-SUV caravan turned into a roadside convenience store when Jake muttered that he needed “stuff” before they reached their destination. Everyone else in the lead car knew what that meant, but they all had their reasons for being fine with the detour, not the least of which was a loving empathy. They were perhaps five miles outside of the town they had already stopped in to stock up on fresh food items not already packed with everything else. A sign outside the store proclaimed it the Last Stop before the Wilderness, which just made it a kind of fated pause, one supposed.

But Josh did wonder what else Jake needed because as far as he knew all those vices of his had been provisioned for already.

Maybe it was the sign. It made **him** want to stop, certainly. _Last chance!_

***********

The road wound around the mountain for so long, and the landscape invoked a primal recognition. Ancient granite and limestone and dense with trees, a solid carpet of green far above and below, the sky sheltering all in shadows and even in sunshine where it lay thick like honey to heighten so much sylvien wonder.

They sang “She’ll Be Coming ‘Round the Mountain” and they sang the Spring suite from _Rocky Mountain High_ -

_Open up your eyes and see the brand new day_  
_clear blue sky and brightly shining sun._  
_Open up your ears and hear the breeze essay_  
_everything that's cold and gray is gone._

\- because it was just _everything_ that they had been wanting. Trees and fresh air and space.

“Where the fuck is this place?” Jake asked, his voice taking on an undertone of awestruck curiosity.

“I’m just waiting for the turnoff,” Micah replied, as the cars wound up and around the mountain road.

“Are you sure there’s even a place out here?” he replied, face to the window.

“I really hope so,” Josh murmured, “because this is fucking _amazing_.”

The GPS prompted the driver in a crisp British accent and Micah downshifted and turned on the blinker.

“There is nothing else around here,” Danny mused, looking out his own window. “Like, it’s just gonna be us and all the forest creatures.”

“We **are** forest creatures!” Sam exclaimed and his bandmates all agreed.

“How is there even electricity out here?!” Jake wondered.

“They told me this place is _exactly_ what you wanted, so -” Micah replied, downshifting again as he had to carefully negotiate the sharp turn. The dirt road led them right between the trees to a clearing and there was the cabin. What they could see of the view beyond it looked like a postcard. Nothing but rolling hills, trees and sky.

“Oh **this** is rustic,” Sam observed.

“Rustic as fuck!” Danny rejoined.

“And one hundred percent haunted,” Jake concluded.

“You don’t know!” Josh shot back.

Micah turned off the ignition and they sat there for a moment, the sounds of the other members of the caravan seeming to fade even as they pulled up alongside in the turn-out. The others: Ryan had come along same as Micah to assist the band with whatever they required, and Al had sent one of his assistants to help with setup and recording, a guy in the same age range as they were named Phil. Sam had already started to haze him, calling him Pill, and to his credit he accepted it with smiling equanimity. Al didn’t hire _anybody_ with an attitude, which was a rarity for Detroit.

They stared at the rundown facade of the place, old and dusty and looking like there might be wood-rot in the faded planks of the front porch and shutters, but then again it appeared in harmony with its’ surroundings. If not as old as the forest, at least old enough that it had peaceably coexisted for decades untold.

“Don’t tell me you can’t feel that vibe,” Jake insisted, looking at Josh.

“Well yeah, but -”

“Haunted,” Jake and Sam said in unison. Danny jumped.

“Dang you guys are _freaky_, stop it!”

Josh turned to Micah. “Whaddya think, kid?”

“It does have a vibe? But I dunno, maybe just because there’s fuck-all out here. My gramps used to call ‘em _lonesome places_. Eerie but not, like, scary.”

Ryan was looking in from Josh’s side, hands spread out like _What?_

Sam emerged first with a grin. “This place is fucking _haunted_, Ryan!”

The other shrugged. “Well you can play loud all day and all night, so fuck it!”

They all vocalized some variant of _true_ and set to work unloading the cars.

***********

The rest of the day might have dissuaded them of notions of the phantasmal until they went into the basement. It was large and filled with junk but in an organized sort of way. Clean and well-lit but if there was a vibe to the house itself, the basement was broadcasting it loud and clear. The boys were no stranger to basements, had spent half their lives hanging out in them for one reason or another. Danny had taught himself to play drums in the basement, even as his lovingly indulgent parents and sister suffered his formative experimentation above his head. And all four of them had spent what would likely add up to months in the Kiszka’s basement over the years listening to the music which would shape their own notion of creativity, absorbing it and letting it percolate through their minds, taking them to another world which they longed to bring to life.

But they all shivered even as it wasn’t exactly creepy on the surface. But there was something _wrong_, like they weren’t meant to be there.

“This place is fuckin' haunted!” Jake shouted, and he was a little drunk.

“I think the ghosts can hear you just fine, Jakey,” Josh said, his voice quavering slightly.

“It’s just a basement full of junk,” Sam reasoned. “Why would it be mad at us?”

Josh considered that basements weren’t scary to them, but as locales of dread they certainly worked well enough. Like the protagonist of “The Rats in the Walls” finding a portal to a terrifying city beneath the ancestral castle. There was nothing untoward or amiss but there was something _wrong_.

“I’ve got goosebumps,” Danny whispered. His eyes were wide. “I feel like there’s someone staring at us.”

“Yeah I’m done,” Jake declared, making for the stairs.

“We don’t need it for anything, so best leave it alone,” Josh concurred.

Danny was halfway up the stairs when he turned to look at Sam, still standing below staring at the rows of shelving and piles of boxes.

“Sammy, c’mon!” he urged, his voice still a whisper.

“But I’m okay,” Sam replied, looking up at Danny’s fearful expression. He smiled, but it did nothing for Danny’s concern.

“Fuck, I’m not gonna leave you down here, that’s not happening. But please, _I don’t like it!_”

Sam was surprised, he had never seen Danny afraid. His best friend jumped at horror movies and had been wary in certain locales during their recent travels but he had never...no wait, there was that one time when they were in Glasgow; they had gone for a walk, ultimately to visit the pub around the corner from their B&B and it was raining, which was totally typical for Scotland, but the two of them had been assailed by a heavy palpable dread as they passed through a nearby alleyway.

“Did you feel that?!” Danny had whispered in much the same way as he was right now.

“What the actual fuck,” Sam had replied and then someone had opened the door of the pub and the sound had startled them right out of their fear.

And now...he could feel it, the hair standing on his arms, the sensation like breath on the back of his neck, and Danny had moved back against the wall, eyes still wide, one of his large long-fingered hands white-knuckling the banister of the stairs. Sam walked slowly and carefully over to the stairs and then climbed up, placing his hand at the small of Danny’s back.

“C’mon,” he said, trying to keep his voice level.

Once on the other side of that door (which Sam locked with the key hanging from a hook next to it) they both let out a shaky sigh.

“Fuck!” Danny exclaimed.

“Double fuck!”

“Please promise me we’re not going back in there.”

“That’s a big nope.”

“Thank fuck.”

Sam bumped Danny with his shoulder. He felt calmer in the other's solidity. “So...shots?”

Danny rolled his eyes and finally smiled, in wry fashion. “Definitely.”


	3. The Phantasmagoria

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A visitor offers perspective, if not comfort.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes that little ditty is indeed my own (no wonder a career in Nashville was not for me, lol).

They found themselves in a place outside of time. It was easy to imagine it had been like this forever, or at least as much forever as they _could_ imagine. Though Sam was adept at picturing the Triassic period, speaking of the Panthalassa and how this was all Pangea once upon a long age ago. A place where details changed every day while remaining very much itself.

That night they grilled out on the deck overlooking the forest and tried to establish contact with distant voices.

_In the high lonesome pines_  
_and down in the holler deep and wide_  
_listen to the wind moan and sigh_  
_I’m a-waitin’ on my bride._

_She has gone far from me_  
_much too far and can’t be seen_  
_I traded everything I had for thee_  
_to plead for her return to me._

Their phones had no reception and the only radio stations they could pick up were staticky sermonizing on one end of the dial and tinny bluegrass on the other. Unprepared for this eventuality they understood they would have to survive on the paltry selections they had packed.

They had each brought three discs: Josh, his personally-curated Miriam Makeba mix disc, an album by Juluka, and Alice Coltrane’s _Journey in Satchidanada_ which he had “borrowed” from Sam. Jake had _Fresh Cream_, an Elmore James compilation, and The Kinks’ _Lola versus Powerman and The Moneygoround_. Sam had packed _Heavy Weather_, _Stephen Stills 2_ and Fleet Foxes’ _Helplessness Blues_. Danny’s choices were _Rocky Mountain High_, _Lewis Del Mar_ and _Abbey Road_. They considered their helpmate companions to have more prosaic tastes and therefore no one else was allowed to play whatever was on their phones or otherwise provisioned. Phil felt slightly insulted but Micah and Ryan assured him that it wasn’t a slight on his character, they were just weird and precious during a time like this. And **that** he understood.

Soon enough they were playing and singing whatever came to mind; some old, some new. Ideas were ever-flowing as always, and had to be refined through a focused process. They could throw out riffs, licks, and harmonies for days. To then make it matter took more than just their quicksilver creativity. They each had a role in creating a song beyond their specific parts to play within it. Jake was the hook, to grab your ear and not let go. Josh was the heart: the feeling of his words and melodies interwoven with the riff making the ultimate statement. Sam was the structure, knowing how every piece fit together when subjected to the grounding efforts of the groove. Danny was the map, he knew where the turnarounds should go, how to get from A to B and maybe even to C before coming back around again. How long to stretch and when to contract. Every one of Jake’s ideas was thus fired in the process of sitting down with his guitar and learning to play them, knowing where they were leading once Danny's fingers felt the way. And then the pulse could be found within the center of the whole.

They had written dozens of songs in their formative years, but now that the world was watching they had to matter, they had to live beyond the parameters of performance. Even as each was a moment in time, an image and a feeling and a flash of inspiration, they had to breathe and speak and connect with everyone they could. Josh had his platform now, and he was ready to impart his observations, his dreams and his longing. They were all ambitious in the best of ways.

Sam and Danny watched a hawk circling above the trees as dusk progressed across the sky. “Look at ‘im,” Sam murmured. “I mean, what kind of craziness does it take to drop right out of the sky like he does? And then come right back up.”

Danny smirked. “We may plummet, we may soar, right? But we gotta make our own wind.”

Sam cracked up, even as Danny didn’t mean something so silly. They tussled briefly, as they always had.

The landline near the front door rang, startling everyone. They knew it was connected but hadn’t expected it to ring. But it was necessary in a place where cell phones were the newfangled interlopers. Micah answered, like he lived there. It was the landlord, wondering if he could come for a visit, he was in the neighborhood.

“_What_ neighborhood?” Sam wanted to know.

The others shrugged; they weren’t working so they could afford to be gracious. The invitation was extended and in time he made himself known, a wiry tall-ish man in his 60s with an obvious accent but one which charmed them all the same. He brought paper bags of chicken and ribs and slaw and never one to turn down a meal they all tucked in again.

“Y’all lookin’ right skinny so I figured I’d hook you up with some grub. This comes from Henry’s in the next town over, best barbecue in these parts.”

They agreed with him, nodding and making noises of gustatory approval.

“But what I came here for, y’see, is ask if you’d like to see the Phantasmagoria.”

To a man, they all turned to look at Josh, who loved the word and used it liberally even as it didn’t really mean what he thought it meant. For an actual phantasmagoria was a fearful thing, a waking dream clothed in the mufti of nightmare.

“There’s a magic lantern down in the cellar, it’s a perfect space to view it. It’s old, very old, made somewheres in Europe. The man what sold me this here cabin said he was afeared to move it, bein’ so old and delicate.”

Jake had sobered up, somewhat, in the intervening period between their visit to the basement and that moment, but he shook his head.

“There’s bad vibes down there, sir. We didn’t like it.”

“I shouldn’t think you would, no. But it’s an experience.”

They all pondered what that meant. Sam was about to protest that he wasn’t scared, exactly, but Danny knew all his microexpressions and placed his foot on Sam’s, pressing gently.

_Hush._

“Okay you gotta level with us, please,” Josh said. “Is this place haunted?”

“No more or less than any other, I reckon. Haints are jus' ‘nother part of existence, y’know, and we tend to accept them ‘less they get obstreperous.”

“What’s a haint?” Danny asked.

“Jus' 'nother word for ghost or spirit. Sometimes it’s meant for a mean one, but I don’t feel that here. Not anythin’ meanin’ any harm.”

He had also brought some moonshine and the boys had some experience with that elixir so they drank a few shots and sang some songs with their visitor. Strangely enough that clear liquid made him appear completely sober in his manner.

“The past is close, so close, y’know. Closer than you might think. It’s down deep in the roots of everythin’ ‘round us.”

The night wrapped them in darkness and in mist, dead quiet but also wholly alive in the songs of crickets and frogs and birds, the rustle of various critters, the far cry of coyotes and bobcats. Unfamiliar stars blinked and the moon bleached the landscape in a silver shine. Josh was thinking of a song he’d heard once, not anything he would have chosen himself, but a friend of his had played it one night as they’d crashed post-party in someone’s dorm room. It was supposed to chill everyone out but Josh had started thinking about something in the woods. A tingling along his scalp, to apprehend just enough fear to enjoy the feeling rather than be anxious. At the end of the song, which was an instrumental, the track dropped out to crickets and bees and bass, elements which had been embedded in the composition all along. And there was something dreadfully pleasurable about the experience entire, He felt that now, just as he had been buoyed by the sun and the air and the landscape, now he felt it all turning an ancient gaze towards their pocket of glowing bonhomie.

_Can’t shut us out entirely_, it seemed to say. _You’re in there, but we’re everything else._

Not a gaze like a person has a gaze but a consciousness observing the fleas on its’ hide.

***************

In the end they respectfully declined his invitation and yet -

_(and yet)_

\- they slept, half-listening for creaks and groans and all thinking of that locked door.

_(and what)_

**What** indeed, within the roots of this place.

Josh dreamed of shadow plays parading across walls and ceilings, flickering like frames of silver nitrate, a fabulous dream before it catches fire like the moth and the flame, like curiosity and revelation. Such delightful illusions, such dreadful fantasies.


	4. The eternal curiosity of 3AM

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jake is going through some things.

The problem was never having to start, knowing how and where to start. There was love, and trust, and desire all bound up in what they did and who they were. Their relationship manifested as a band, rather than the other way around. Jake believed it was the reason most bands imploded after a while, because a band is a relationship between people attempting to collaborate, to make a sound in unison. And it couldn’t be just about those two hours onstage, otherwise that experience would be eventually poisoned by whatever it was waiting offstage.

He enjoyed the middle of the night, as the fog rolled in and obscured everything beyond the cabin. But it rose to a particular point then stopped and he could see the moon and the stars high above. He stood within a moonbeam by a window, closing his eyes, the snarled skeins of music in his head all echoing with the same intensity and volume. That was why he couldn’t sleep, the music wouldn’t let him.

Headphones on, eyes narrowed as he regarded the large monitor in front of him, Jake had about six different plug-ins open, obscuring the main mixing console view beneath the other windows. He listened to the same guitar phrase processed through these various effects, seeking the sound his brain was insisting was _right_, and not hearing it. He clicked the mouse to close them all and pushed the cans from his ears.

_What the fuck does this need?_ he asked himself, thinking he should take a smoke break rather than continue to force it and give his ears playback fatigue. Al had taught him about that - if you’re analyzing a piece of music clinically, there is a threshold for listening to something too many times. It would sound the same after a while, even though it wasn’t. He scanned the desk, thinking he had brought his cigarettes with him, but they weren’t there. Jake shifted in his chair and looked around the immediate space. He heard a creak, the sound of weight upon wood, and thought someone had gotten up for a piss, or to check on him. But only that one sound.

_The cabin talks to itself in the middle of the night. It gets lonely when everyone is asleep._

He smirked, he wasn’t normally so whimsical, that was Joshie’s thing. Besides, the house could talk to _him_ if it wanted to. Jake stretched, raising his arms above his head, feeling his shoulders and his neck pop and those clicks were followed by another creak. The sound had heft, as if someone were walking in the corridor but very slowly, deliberating between each step.

The cabin breathed unease against the back of his neck.

_What the actual -_ he got up from the chair and found his pack on the coffee table in front of the fireplace, now displaying a dull glow. He banked the embers and placed another log upon them, the wood crackled and popped as the heat enveloped it. Jake slid out a cigarette and placed it between his lips, palming his lighter and moving towards the nearest door, which was the front door. 

_There’s no chairs to sit on out there._

But he had already committed to a direction, besides, just a few drags should hold him. He wasn’t sure what time it was, exactly, but probably close enough to give in to sleep at this point. He turned the latches of the deadbolt and doorknob and opened the door. The cold beyond felt like a million shards of ice raining down, but not exactly damp even with the fog. He quickly sorted through the selection of outerwear in the closet and pulled out his leather jacket. Quietly closing the door behind him and marveling at the solid wall of haze, Jake lit up and added a writhing plume of smoke to it, exhaling into the night. The moon was brighter out here, the fog was a shifting curtain of white and he was intrigued. He thought he’d never seen fog like that before, not even in London. It muted the sounds of the nocturnal landscape, the crickets and birds and critters all sounded so very far away now. The coal of his cigarette flared with each inhale and reflected against the density of the fog, and he laughed softly, trying to spy his own reflection as well.

_Would it be freaky to see faces in the fog, even your own?_

Huh. Maybe?

It would be an illusion, of course. Why was he spooking himself like this?

Jake watched the fog and then started, dropping the butt of his cigarette and quickly stepping on it, hearing it hiss upon the cold wood. It had burned down nearly to the filter, a tendril of smoke drifting upwards. He picked up the butt and placed it in the pail of sand by the front door. He felt that same stirring against the back of his neck as he opened the door.

Late night, middle of no and where -

_(this place is fucking haunted, stop denying the obvious)_

\- what the actual **fuck** was this voice like there was more than one person in his head?

Returning to the workstation, he saw it was now after four and he could have sworn the last time he looked it was just coming on three. He hadn’t bothered to take off his jacket and now in proximity to the renewed blaze in the fireplace he felt the deep chill drain out of him, causing a full-body shiver. He got up again and stood in front of the flames.

Creak. Creak. _Creaaaaaaaaaak_.

His skin prickled, gooseflesh and cold and atavistic dread warring across its surface.

Footsteps, but he couldn’t place where they were coming from. So very slow, not like anyone alive

_Wait, what?!_

and conscious or even just half-conscious and trying to remember where they were.

Footsteps had a rhythm and it was the decided lack of rhythm he found the most disturbing.

_What is it you forget after you die? Is it everything human?_

Jake walked back to the desk and downed the amber puddle at the bottom of his glass, pouring another couple inches into it from the bottle of Chivas. He belted it without a pause, wiping his mouth and breathing out through his nose, the whisky’s melange of sweetness mingling with the spicy aftertaste of smoke on his tongue, alcohol and nicotine suffusing his bloodstream to wrap his nerves in a velvet detachment.

Okay...well, what is it? He stood perfectly still, counting a beat in his head, that method of keeping time which all musicians needed to learn if they wanted to play with others. But part of his brain stretched and strained to hear

_(something)_

whatever there was to hear.

The light changed by slow degrees. Black fading to gray. A chorus of birds greeted the new day. Jake flinched again, drawing a shaky breath.

He hadn’t moved. His body ached from the pose he had enacted and it was now 6:25.


	5. hush(ed)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> do YOU seeeeeeeee (me)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just to note, for those who may not recognize it, there are lines from Wordsworth's "Daffodils" poem in this one.

“Do you guys think there’s mice?” Sam asked.

10:47am, Sam and Danny fully awake and fueled by coffee and cereal. Josh less so, musing over a dream, staring out the windowed wall on the west side of the cabin. His mind had been emptied of the noise of their former pursuits and pace, but this dream -

_she stood on the side of the road, muddy feet and worn dress_

\- remained so vividly in the front of his mind. He wanted to go outside and look around, it seemed important.

Jake was still asleep, Ryan said he’d been awakened after sunrise by Jake’s passage to his own room. The others decided he could sleep awhile, they could always work on arrangements of those songs they already knew they would demo while they were there.

_But you saw her, for real. Don’t you remember?_

“I didn’t hear anything that sounded like mice,” Phil commented. “I mean, inside.”

Danny shrugged. “I had some weird dreams, so I dunno _what_ I heard, dude.”

“Me too!” Sam rasped. “Freaky shit, like, in a movie.”

Josh continued to stare out the window. His bandmate brothers were used to his silences as much as his constant quipping.

“I dreamed I was in a cave,” Danny continued. “And it went on and on, like it wasn’t really a cave but some kind of hallway. And somebody was there.”

Sam sipped at his coffee, giving wide eyes to his best friend. “Who?”

“I dunno, I don’t remember, just the feeling that I knew somebody was there with me.”

“Maybe it was me.”

Danny smirked, taking up another heaping spoonful of cereal. “Nah, cuz I wouldn’t have been weirded out. It was kinda like -”

“What?”

“ - the basement.”

“I went in the basement this morning,” Phil noted. “Had to trip the breakers. Cold as fuck down there.”

“Is the electricity okay?” Josh asked, turning to the others. Still distracted, but this was an important consideration.

“Yeah, I think we just plugged too many things into one fuse, is all. I’ve got it worked out now.”

“We’ve got the Pro Tools on its’ own backup UPS so if something does go snap crackle pop at least it won’t crash and delete everything,” Ryan said, and they all smiled.

“It’s witchcraft!” Sam teased in a creaky voice. “All this newfangled technology!”

Danny laughed at him, rolling his eyes. “Eventually you’ve got to come into the 21st Century, Sammy. Like, just a little bit.”

“Can’t we just return to an agrarian society where we roam the earth, trading songs for a basket of apples, a barrel of wine, maybe some chickens?” Josh riffed.

“Man I don’t wanna sleep in a ditch, though!” Danny declared. “Isn’t that what wandering minstrels had to do?”

Josh rolled his eyes, mock disgusted. “No appreciation of the old ways!”

(_here_)

He turned his head, what was that? He strained to hear what was behind the conversation. It was so quiet, or at least the kind of non-quiet he appreciated. Wind, birdsong, trees whispering to themselves those ancient secrets they knew, the thoughts of the earth. Somewhere below, he was certain, a river was laughing as the sunlight tickled it with golden tendrils.

All that green and blue and gray, it mesmerized him. Josh fell silent once more.

***********

Eyes wide open. Was he breathing? He wasn’t sure. A weight on his chest. He was certain something stared at him. He could feel it. But there was nothing to see but the ceiling. It was _talking_ to him.

_I must be breathing. Unless I’m dead, and this is what you do when you're dead._

(**do you see me**)

A paralysis which went on forever. Until it didn’t.

***********

...just down the hall he could hear footsteps. Slow, too slow to be a person. Unless that person moved with a purposeful confusion. Or misdirection. And yet it was as loud as a gunshot.

_Creaaaaaaaaaaaak._

Seven people, and something else too.

***********

“Wait though, how does that resolve to the break?”

Sam played a phrase and Josh shook his head.

“No that’s not right, it’s gotta go _up_ before, because I’m going into my -” He vocalized a D#.

“I still think that’s too low,” Sam commented.

“But the song’s in F,” Danny countered. “If it were in G, like ‘Cold Wind’ then I could see going way high.”

“That repeating phrase, it’s totally a growl,” Josh asserted, and the other two laughed.

“Okay but in the chorus you go _up_, like you’re saying,” Sam came back.

“So I do the same in the transition,” Josh said.

“Well yeah.”

“Isn’t that what I just said?!”

Danny cracked up. “Okay okay, we got it.” He made notations on a legal pad.

“Wait a minute, which song are we talking about? The one with the slide?”

“Samuel, what the fuck?” Danny asked, grinning but confused. “It’s 'The New Day’ isn’t it?”

They looked to Josh for confirmation and the other blinked, also looking befuddled.

“They’re in the same key, aren’t they? Damn.”

They all laughed but there was a strangeness lingering within the levity.

***********

he couldn’t even blink

(**do**)

_I wandered lonely as a cloud_

(**you**)

_A host, of golden daffodils;_

(**see**)

_I gazed—and gazed—but little thought_

(**me**)

and wondered how long it could go on, or if there was even Time, anymore

***********

“Who wants a sandwich?” Micah called out, and his friends all raised their hands.

“I could eat, I guess,” Phil opined.

“Should we get ‘im up now?” Ryan asked, knowing how difficult it was to wake a Kiszka even under the best of circumstances.

“Looks like he was up for hours trying to work out his solo for ‘Lover, Leaver,’” Danny noted, looking over the log for the mixer.

“Nah, let ‘im -”

Josh woke up, just then. Present in a way he had not been all morning, something nagging at him, dividing his attention. He tried not to run but his step was quick enough

_creak creak creak_

that he felt Sam and Danny staring at him as he left the room. No one followed. His heart hurt as it beat with that paranoid rhythm.

_wrong wrong wrong_

He stood before Jake’s door and felt the crush of terror. Was he breathing? Was anyone?

***********

“Can we open a window or something?” Sam asked. “I feel like -”

***********

_can you see me_

Danny couldn’t get the phrase out of his mind. He heard it between the beats, the bars, the stanzas. Echolalia from he knew not where. Did he dream it? Was that what _someone_ had been saying to him?

***********

"- I can’t breathe.”

***********

His vision wavered and he made a sort of gagging sound. The door seemed to him like he shouldn't touch it, like it would burn or freeze him. But of course all he had to do was turn the knob. As soon as he did, and it swung open, Jake sat up in bed, wide-eyed and gasping.

“What?” Josh asked him, whispering. “What was that?”

But his twin, beyond words and not fully conscious, could not reply.

***********

doyouseemedoYOUseemedoyou**see**medoyouseedoyoudoyoudo


	6. Is this a window?  Is this a door?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When things fall into place...or don't.

“We can only see in the dark.”

***********

There was a time in his brief college tenure when Josh had fallen in with a D&D guild and he attended their game nights more for the shenanigans than for the roleplay (which struck Jake as weird because he knew - in the same way he knew he had two moles on his ass that he might have to worry about someday - that Josh loved nothing more than to pretend) but otherwise the members of Greta Van Fleet preferred their games simple and their side bets ridiculous.

Herschel had gotten them into Qwirkle, which they enjoyed but they kept losing the tiles. They all loved a good game of Hearts, but complained that Sam was a card-counting savant who couldn’t be trusted. Monopoly was a treasured favorite but too complicated in all its’ accessories to make the trip with them, so they relied on the more easily-portable backgammon and Yahtzee for time displacement. But they preferred games they could play all together, as some of the best times had been spent getting drunk, yelling and laughing at each other, talking shit and resorting to a mild form of physical violence at times. And, if one cared to pay attention, there were all sorts of things you could learn about your best friends in the heat of competition.

In the cabin there was a space which was assigned to such activities - a bedroom with a fireplace and thick woolen rug before the hearth, which was then covered in pillows and a low table for refreshments. The boom box was present along with a couple guitars, music a constant presence in their lives and specific community. At least some portion of the day or night was given to this particular kind of togetherness.

But...when all gathered in one room, what was the rest of the cabin doing? All those other rooms, empty spaces, what did it dream of when no one was around?

They could hear the wood expanding and contracting as the outside temperature fluctuated. Sounds they knew very well from their own upbringing. Expected noises.

But the creaking.

_Creaaaaaaaaaaaak._

It gnawed at one’s peace of mind after a time. Even as they sought to drown it out with other sounds, other substances. It was there, it would not be discouraged.

A whisper of unease, provoking goosebumps. It would be so easy to stop everything and give it their attention, their consideration and theorizing. They knew it longed for their direct focus, why else had it been so obvious?

And so eyes met and a pact was made. And they tried **not** to allow it into their charmed circle.

But inquisitive and hungry things, they seek to smudge the circles we set down, blur the lines we draw, weaken the walls we build and the resolve we attempt. All the protection, actual or illusory (and really, it’s all illusion in the end, the act of Will of a mind which refuses to comprehend), we construct, it is as smoke or the flimsiest of materials.

_(do you see me)_

They were asking the world that very same question, when it all comes down to it.

***********

Jake stopped wanting to play games after the die came up the same every time he rolled. For three days.

“This isn’t funny!” he exclaimed, frustration and fear creasing his face.

They all looked around the room in silence, as the music had stopped a while ago. The door was closed and they collectively wondered what was happening on the other side of it.

Phil had become paranoid, pulling the hard drives and carrying them around the house with him. Taking the ones which were full and locking them in the truck which hauled the gear.

“It’s only three more days,” Sam stated calmly, still not particularly scared. More _curious_ as to what else might happen.

“Three-and-a-half,” Josh countered, but only as an aside.

“Does anybody else hear...music?” Danny asked.

***********

“Wait...is that a _cemetery_?”

“Well **that** just fucking figures, doesn’t it.”

***********

Sam and Danny walked along a dirt track, studded with the rock of the mountain they trod upon, understanding that mountains are actually collections of rocks, moved and shaped over time. A distant comprehension of the geological time it took to create this place, they felt the gravity of it all around them. The track led away from the cabin, along the ridge it inhabited. So many trees above and below, in the valley and also rising to cover the top of the mountain. The sun was warm, the sky was cloudless and a shade of blue which made them both a bit dizzy to look at, it was so clear and deep. As they walked they bumped and brushed against one another, the space and solitude of this place prompting a need for simple gestures of proximity. The air was so clean, but also full of the scents of dirt and resin and pollen and just the faintest hint of humidity.

“Can you even imagine living here?” Sam asked, half-rhetorical, stopping to look over the valley.

“Like them dudes in Alaska, off in the middle of friggin’ nowhere, I mean, it’s _beautiful_ but -”

“**But**.”

“What if something happened to you? And there’s nobody for, like, twenty miles or whatever.”

“What happens to you when you’re really alone?”

Danny turned wide eyes to Sam, fully hazel in the strong sunlight. Brown eyes blinked back at him.

“What does **that** mean? Like, what, you stop being a person when you’re alone?”

“I dunno. I wonder, though.”

“You are _so_ weird.”

Sam laughed, his braying obnoxious laugh which Danny couldn’t imagine ever living without. It echoed around the wild landscape. They decided to turn back and when coming up on the SUVs parked at the turnout in front of the cabin, noticed that one of them had a window rolled down.

“Who did **that**?” Sam pointed at the sight. “Don’t want critters climbin’ in the rentals!”

Danny made a sound in his throat which basically translated to _I dunno_ as they walked over to the vehicle. Sam stretched his neck to get a peek and just as quickly stopped Danny’s egress with an arm across his chest.

“Dude, what?”

“Sssh! Look.”

Danny cautiously glanced inside. Jake lay asleep across the backseat.

“What?!”

“He’s really spooked, I think. Maybe he won’t have weird dreams outside.”

Danny considered this new logic. “I’d like to stop havin’ weird dreams too.”

“I mean, we _will_, when we leave. Totally.”

“Do you think this place is really haunted?” Danny knew Sam was much more likely to invoke science against anything; a rational person, but also empathetic and artistic.

“Yeah. But what **is** a ghost, y’know? That’s the real question. And I don’t think anybody knows.”

“Does it matter? I mean, is knowing what a ghost is gonna stop them from freakin’ you out?”

“Well no, just like knowing what a tiger is isn’t gonna stop it from eating you, or whatever. But still, there’s a lotta crazy shit in the Universe, Daniel.”

They had been whispering, in consideration of their slumbering bandmate brother. They moved away from the car and into the shade of the front porch.

“Think there’s coffee left?” Sam asked.

“If there isn’t, we can always make some more.”

“Shall we, old chum?”

“We shall, old bean.”

***********

Jake counted off, his usual hoarse exhortation. “ONE, TWO, THREE, GO!”

Sam and Danny fell in behind him, Danny rolling heavy but with a spritely swing supporting Jake’s riff. Sam played throaty quarter notes along with the kick.

“Yeah Gojira, swing it!” Jake enthused, hitting a power chord then going back into the riff.

“Where’s this bus goin,’ bro?” Sam asked as they continued along. At this point the rhythm section didn’t even need to look at each other, sort of like steering a car with your arms rather than your hands; fully confident that you were lined up as well as you needed to be.

“Okay listen - gimme a little John McVie, like, counterpoint, fill up the air n’shit.”

Sam began an answering riff, trying to fit into the spaces between the kick and hi-hat.

“Yeah yeah, that’s good!”

“Like, twelve measures and then -” Danny suggested, throwing out a sharp fill on the snare.

“Oh that is _the shit_!” Sam exclaimed. “Wait, let’s -”

“No don’t stop, I gotta another part now!” Jake protested. He was playing another sequence which he had decided would be for the verses and then the other would come around again in twelve bars.

“Okay okay, but where’s the turnaround?”

“We drivin’ right off the goddamn cliff, baby!” Jake teased with a grin and his rhythm section laughed and continued to follow along, fully trusting their driver.

***********

“Music? What? Where?”

“Ssssh, listen!” Danny hissed.

And they _could_. It was as if it had always been there, right there with them in the cabin. Something so old and yet also timeless. It drifted in and out like a broadcast refusing to tune in but also continual, its’ pulse and its’ insistence in being heard by whomever was there to hear it.

“Wait a minute...I dreamed this!” Sam asserted.

“Did you? Or did you just hear it **in** your dream?” Josh asked.

They all sat back, eyes so wide and mouths agape, awestruck in the oldest sense of the word.

Dread, and wonder, and incomprehension.


	7. Stairs that led to the beyond

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> (and in this waking dream, looked into her eyes)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's okay not to be okay, right? That's what I keep telling myself...but anyone with the patience to stick with this story: thank you.  


_Have I set such a star_  
_To show light on thy brow_  
_That thou sawest from afar_  
_What I show to thee now?_  
_Have ye spoken as brethren together, the sun and the mountains and thou?_  
Algernon Swindburne, “Hertha”

***********

“Wait...is that a _cemetery_?”

“Well **that** just fucking figures, doesn’t it.”

They looked out at the headstones, weathered and crumbling, succumbing to that devouring force of entropy. _Known in life and in death, but not in eternity. _ Looked out beyond the mountain at all that green which seemed the whole wide world from where they stood. Then looked up to the cabin, not visible from their vantage point but they could _feel_ it. All the expectation a structure can contain simply by its’ presence, its’ reason for standing as it does against all which seeks to tear it down.

“You can’t just send them out into the cold, like that, could you?” Josh murmured. “You’d have to make a place for them to rest with their kin.”

Jake blinked as a thought which he could have sworn he’d never considered before flashed in his consciousness like a jump cut. Of course he’d want to be enshrined with Josh, if such a thing was even still a custom 50 or 60 years in the future.

_This is a nice place, so peaceful._

“You’d want to be home,” he said, and his brother nodded.

***********

The door swung open, but Danny couldn’t tell if it was in the dream or in the room. Some part of his brain considered that it didn’t matter because it was all a dream right now, it was all he knew or could know until he woke up. He didn’t want to think about what it meant if he was actually awake.  


The door swung open and he could hear voices and music, but was it **the** music? It was so hard to know, something which resided only on the far edge of one’s perception. Almost as if it’s not there but once you do hear then it’s _always_ there. But not quite.

Danny tried to sit up but he felt so heavy. He thought he might jerk awake as one does sometimes, but there was only the leaden sensation, a weakness like being ill.

The door swung open...and nothing was there. 

Until it was.

***********

They were in the basement, and Sam could feel Danny trembling beside him. Feel the erratic pulse and stuttering breath, the way his skin prickled, a chill deeper than any Michigan winter rising through their feet, making their bones ache.

“Subterranean,” Sam explained, his voice more level than he felt. “That’s why it's cold.”

“If you say so,” Danny replied, but his voice sounded like it wasn’t even his.

Sam recalled a weekend when his brothers had wanted to sleep outside at one of their annual Yankee Springs gatherings. The families involved usually rented cabins but in high summer the kids would normally stake tents and stay up far too late telling ghost stories, playing Truth Or Dare, pulling pranks. On the occasion he was thinking of, the temperature had plummeted fast after full dark had come, but Josh and Jake were insisting they could tough it out, and Sam didn’t normally involve himself in their stubborn standoffs but this time he thought he might have something to prove to himself as well.

Then the glowing dial of his watch read 3:42, his bladder ached, and he was colder than he’d ever been in his life, the space filled with the condensation of their collective breathing, the outside of his sleeping bag damp like it had rained inside the tent. And he was _afraid_ for some reason. Holding his breath, listening to all the sounds of that empty hour.

The chill rising up his spine, making his atlas vertebrae twang like a too-tight string. Shadows...shifting? There was a blur which would not resolve into anything.

“What is that?” he whispered, hoarse with confusion.

“Nothing,” Danny said, and his voice was empty.

***********

Her face, it startled him because he didn’t recognize it as reality.

Danny had taken a photography class a few years prior, curious to learn about such things because his brother-bandmates were all so obsessed with the visual world, and the instructor had said something which he thought was pretty trippy, to really ponder the notion.

_When we view a photograph, we think we’re seeing what really **is**. ‘Pics or it didn’t happen,’ right? But the very act of taking a photograph means that we’re putting a whole bunch of restrictions on the image which comes out of it. We look at photographs or films from over a hundred years ago and we think the people in them look so strange. There’s a lot of reasons why we think that but it’s mostly because it was an entirely different world. We might as well be space aliens to our ancestors, you know?_

She was not alive...she couldn’t be. But she _had_ lived in a time he could not even begin to understand.

A gasp as she flickered out of sight. _How?_

Her laughter, in his ear. But she was not there. No one, maybe not even him.

_Is this the dream?_

Did it matter, either way?

His body jerked hard, an arm flinging out as if to ward off something. Danny blinked, multiple times, daylight and voices and music and

(laughter)

he panted, greeted by the mundane vision of this room he had been sleeping in, it was quite plain...rustic, he supposed they might say

(laughter)

eyes wide he made himself lie still

(_is this the dream_)

waiting

(_is that in my head or in the room_)

a sound so innocuous unless it should not be. Could not be.

And no matter where it was coming from, did it matter? If he could _hear_ it?

He heard footsteps, he was afraid to blink. If he blinked she would be there, again. He was afraid to listen, but all he could do was hear.

“Daniel,” Sam called out, approaching his door, “are you still sleep -”

Danny sat up, rubbing his eyes, heart pounding but relieved as he never had been before at the sight of his best friend.

“Dude, there is _definitely_ a ghost here.”

***********

They absorbed the narrative of Danny’s experience seriously, thoughtfully.

“You know why people just never get the fuck out in a ghost story?” Josh asked, finally.

“In the story they can never just leave, for whatever reason,” Jake replied. “Like, it’s that way for anybody. Unless your house burns down, or whatever, you’re not, like, just gonna _leave_.”

“It’s because it’s _swallowed_ you,” Josh rejoined, and his voice was theatrically dreadful but at the same time entirely earnest. 

“Are you saying we **can’t** leave?” Danny asked, and Sam experienced a creepy-crawly chill of déjà vu to hear the other’s voice so diminished by fear.

“Why does this house wanna scare us?” Sam inquired. “Did something really bad happen?”

“It doesn’t feel like that, exactly, just something that wants to be seen.”

“Her,” Danny cut in, voice still hushed. “It’s a little girl.”

“Or at least that’s what it wants you to _think_ it is,” Josh said. But he also felt that same frisson, realizing he had seen her too.

Their helpmates had not said a word, perched on the edges of the grouping, and waited for whatever decision would be made. But they all could tell those three believed something was wrong.

“Two days,” Sam reiterated. “Are we too scared to keep going?”

“I’m _scared_ but -” Danny began and the others nodded.

“I mean -” Micah said, his voice shaky around the edges, “you guys are making good progress on the songs, right? Even with all this other shit.”

Jake nodded. “We’re gonna lose a few days if we leave now, that’s just the truth.”

“It’s up to you,” Ryan stated. “We’ll do whatever you want to do, but although I’m weirded out as fuck I don’t feel, like, _unsafe_. Do you?”

All eyes turned to Danny and he shrugged. “Feeling scared feels like being hurt but **can** we get hurt by this? I don’t know. Like, if I was here by myself? I would _definitely_ get the fuck out.”

“Oh my god can you imagine?” Sam exclaimed.

A collective shiver. Silence descended and then Danny realized they were all _listening_ for...whatever. Josh stood up after a few moments.

“I think we should do something, just, _something else_. Jakey, let’s get to work on our Indian feast, okay?”

Jake nodded and rose, walking towards the sliding glass door which led onto the deck. “I’ll get the grill going for the chicken,” he said. “Has it marinated long enough?”

“Overnight, so it should be fine,” Josh replied.

Sam sat down on the couch next to Danny. “Dude, I’m not sayin’ I wanna get drunk but -”

Danny shook his head. “I feel like if I drink **now**, before we eat, it’s gonna make me sick.”

“Okay yeah, but you scared **me**, y’know. You were _so pale_.”

“You’d be too, if you saw what I did.”

Silence again, shoulder-to-shoulder, listening to Josh make ready in the kitchen, cabinet doors and drawers opening and closing, the clatter of culinary instruments.

“Hey,” Sam whispered. “Did we go back in the basement?”

“When?”

“I don’t know. I think it was a dream but, it didn’t feel like a dream.”

“I’m pretty sure we didn’t but...can you still hear the music?”

Their eyes met, it was a comfort even as both expressions were suffused with doubt.

“I mean, is it **really** there? Know what I mean?”

“Yeah. Like, I hear her laughing but I don’t know if it was all in my head to begin with. But dude, like, to hear laughing when there shouldn’t be any?”

“Terrifying.”

Danny gave Sam a tiny shove. “For real, though.”

“I know! And I mean, if you _hear_ it, whether or not it’s really there, then what difference does it make because you _heard_ it. That’s what matters.”

“What happened? In your dream, or whatever. In the basement.”

“I think you were, like, _possessed_.”

“Fuck you Sammy.”

“No seriously! That’s why I’m worried. I mean, it was probably a dream -”

Danny put Sam in a headlock. “Think you’re dreamin’ now, kid?”

Sam mock-flailed and Danny felt normality finally trickling back into his psyche.


End file.
